A/N: 29 story alerts and 27 favorites! Awesomesauce! But not even thirty reviews? ~sadface~

Well, I'll take what I can get And, now we have fluffy/sexy goodness to (hopefully) counteract the angst. No actual naughty bits in this chapter, but perhaps later. Ohohoho~. This chapter is all Kuro-tan, bee-tee-dubs.

Kurogane

I woke up to the feeling of a light weight on my chest. Opening my eyes, I saw Fai sprawled out on top of me, mostly naked. I almost jumped, if it had not been for the fact that he was looking like he was practically dead in his sleep. Well, dead was better than the way he had been before. Oh, shit, wait a minute. I wondered if he was really even breathing...yeah, he was. His chest rose and fell against my own raggedly. As much as I would have liked to let him sleep, I knew that checking to see if his fever had gone down would be the better thing for him. As slowly as I could, I sat up, taking Fai' sweaty body with me. That was a good thing, the fact that he was drenched in sweat and that he was no longer so blazing hot.

I just reached out to touch his forehead with my hand, and thankfully, it was cool to the touch without even having to use a thermometer. The guy still looked a bloody wreck, though, so I tucked him back into the sheets. I sort of felt like it was wrong to do that, putting him back on the sheets he'd been sweating out his fever on all night, but I figured it was better than having to wake him up or move him in order to change them. When I checked the clock, it dawned at me that it would probably be a good idea to go ahead and wake him up anyway. The idiot had not even had anything in his stomach, or even down his throat, for nearly two days now. The last time I'd managed to force water down his throat without him heaving it back up or coughing his lungs out was yesterday would be way too dehydrated if I didn't find a way to get him something to drink at least. So, even though he looked for all the world like he wanted nothing else but to stay that way for a good week, and I wanted to let him, I sat beside Blondie and shook him awake, against my better judgment.

"Hey, stupid," I grumbled. He grumbled back in response, although it was nowhere near as coherent as I was. God, he sounded awful. I stroked his hair, trying not to wake him to fast. I knew that it would more than likely induce a pounding headache, if he were anything like me. Whenever I had been sick, and my mother hand sat me up all of a sudden, from a deep sleep, I always woke up and felt the room had some sort of hellish vendetta against me, making me want to roll my eyes back into my head.

"Wha...?" His eyes blinked open, then shut, then open then...shut.

"No, not time for sleeping," I growled, shaking him a little bit harder. "You have time for that later, right now I've got to get something for you to drink." I held him in a sitting position.

"Too tired. Can't it wait, Kuro?" He whispered, nodding off on my shoulder. Any other time and I might have indulged him, but something inside my guts told me that he was half faking anyway. I figured that the best thing to do was move him to the chair in the living room, where he could rest while I made him something, but that way he would not get entirely to comfortable to fall back into a deep sleep. I put my one hand under his slim, long legs, and the other on his back to support him against me.

"Put your arms around me," I ordered. He weakly raised them, looping them about my neck. Well, that was not going to offer very much support, so I still had to be careful about how I carried him. I got to the sitting area and dumped him on the black leather chair. Just like I'd predicted, his head slumped against the arm, to tired even to stay in an upright position even with he support of the headrest. "Don't get too cozy, I'm getting you something to eat."

I searched through the cupboard for a few minutes, until I finally settled on something relatively quick and easy. Some chicken noodle soup, and some hot chocolate to wash it down, if he felt up to it. On the can, there were little pictures of noodle characters from some sort of children show. For some reason that made me almost smile to myself; it would make Fai happy, if he was coherent enough to even take note of the fun shapes he was going to eat. After I had found a pot, I turned on the burner and mixed he soup with some water to dilute the salt in it. About half way through, I put a mug of water into the microwave, setting it for two minutes. I leaned against the counter, waiting for the soup to heat up, and in the meantime, I poured the chocolate powder into the boiling water.

"Hey, Fai," I walked into the room, holding the cup of hot cocoa (with marshmallows, probably the worst that could be done for a person as sick as he was; I ought to have made him drink some chamomile tea, or something with Vick's, but who in the heck wanted to be tortured with that shit? It was bad enough the guy was sick already.) I looked around, the chair was there, but where was the blond head of messy hair that should have been peeking out from the top? "You in here, moron?"

The back of the recliner faced the me, so I had to walk around to see what had happened. For a second, worry stabbed into me. I moved around to look at the other side of the chair And there was the idiot, lying faced down on the floor on the other side of the chair like man who had passed out from drinking too much, with his head buried in his hands. Resisting the urge to laugh at how stupid he looked, I picked him up and set him back on the leather seat, roughly. I was tired of playing. Sure, he had been sick, but he had overused his sleeping quota for the year, even so.

"Oi, wake up." I shook him roughly. "I got something for ya." When, after a few slow moments, he finally seemed lucid enough, and I saw that he would stay that way for the next while, I pushed the mug of cocoa into his cold hands.

"Ohh, Kuro-pi made me hot chocolate," he squealed, although it came out as more of a sniffle," How thoughtful he is." He took a sip of it, praising my efforts.

"All I did was put some stupid chocolate flavored powder into some water," I griped, but I was secretly pleased that Fai liked it. Changing the subject, I asked him if he was up for some soup.

"Yes, please, Chef Ou-Wanko!" He affirmed. His voice still came out hoarse, but I guess that was to be expected from a person who had not been using his for days. Now that I thought about it, this was the longest I had gone without hearing Fai tease me, or talking at length; I had to admit, somewhere deep down, that I had missed it.

"Wait here, I'll go get a lap tray."No point in making him get up to come to the kitchen. The kid was probably not strong enough to make it there on his own anyhow, and now way Jose was I going to carry him. Light as he was, the guy could still throw out your back if you weren't careful, or used to picking him nodded, sipping on the hot drink, kicking one of his legs against the recliner like he was a little kid at the park. Well, he must be feeling better.

Fai wasted no time polishing off the chicken noodle soup with noodles that were shaped like Pokemon. "Look Kuro-rin, it's a Squirtle, isn't that cute?" I squinted at his spoon. The thing looked nothing like the overly cute upright blue turtle from my childhood.

"Sure, if you say so," I agreed, or at least I pretended to. Somehow, I think he knew that I was only doing it to shut him up, so he ate the rest of his meal in silence.

"It is hardly any fun when you don't engage in the conversation, Kuro-pon," he sighed exasperatedly, like he was scolding me or something, as he pushed away his food to the end table.

"I'm not five years old, and neither are you. Shut up."

"Waaah, Kuro-pipi is so mean to me. Bad puppy, bad!" He flicked me on the nose with his finger. The guy was definitely getting back to his annoyingly cheerful self, no doubt about it. I wondered what had possessed me to think that I had missed him doing something like this. Where had my pride gone?

Somehow, we both ended up on the floor, me straddling Fai, and him with his golden blond hair fanning out willy-nilly, all over the carpet. It was such a light color that it almost blended in with the floor. Well, actually, I know how it happened. During the split second it had take for Fai to wail in disappointment, my feelings of anxiousness over how sick he had been, coupled with relief, had overcome me.

"Do you even realize how much you scared me, asshole? Huh?" I grabbed him by his shoulders, for he was still only half dressed. "I nearly had to drive you to a hospital again, that's how sick you were! How do you think that made me feel, thinking you might die on me for the second time in two months? You know what, I bet you didn't think about it, did you?" He blinked up at me, all pretensions and smiles wiped clean from his face.

"Kurorinta-"

"Shut the hell up!" I growled, and he did. I was not in the mood to be messed with. "Do you know what it was like having to deal with your sorry ass when you were sick?" Maybe I knew, in the back of my mind, that it wasn't really his fault, that my bad temper was because of my lack of sleep when I was taking taking care of him. Well, come to think of it, that really did make it his fault, but it was no good yelling at him. I should have felt guilty that I was yelling at the boy who had been too weak to move or talk less than twelve hours ago. That was what I should have been thinking, but I wasn't. All I wanted to think about, the one and only thing I was even capable of feeling at that moment, was that I had been sure I would have lost him if had I not had the right mind to call the fucking doctor. Fai looked up at me sadly, fiddling with the buttons on my brown polo shirt. For some reason, I have no idea why, that calmed me down a little.

"I'm very sorry, you are absolutely right. You should not have to put up with someone like me," He whispered, letting his hands fall to the floor at his sides. "So, thank you Kurotan. Thank you for being my knight and staying with me, even though I have never done anything to deserve your kindness." Tears welled up in his cerulean eyes, spilling over onto his porcelain cheeks, no matter how hard he squinted them away.

"Hey, hey," I said, taken aback by his emotional outburst. I really shouldn't have been, but I had forgotten that he got this way easily over the past week. Feeling some of the anger dissolve away, I lay down beside Fai on the ground, rather than hovering above him, and put one arm around him, rubbing the small of his back. "You don't have to get so upset. I'm only like this because I haven't been sleeping for upwards of about a week." I heard him gasp, jerking to look at me.

"I've been sick for a week? That long?"

"Yeah, ever since Tomoyo left," I thought of something. "Do you remember taking her to the airport?"

He shook his head. "But poor Kuro, no wonder you were such a wreck. You were probably as tired as I felt." He laid his hand on my chest, over my heart.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. There was no freaking way the guy could be tired after that six day nap he'd taken. "You can't be saying that you didn't actually sleep," I said incredulously, sitting up and pulling him into my lap. He seemed like he was doing anything but looking at me, avoiding my query. "Answer me."

"I had nightmares," he finally admitted, "for a lot of the time. I did sleep, but for some reason I just kept on feeling like I hadn't, no matter how much I tried to get rested." He pushed his face into my neck. I sighed, wondering for the first time if the time that when Fai had tossed and turned, talking in his sleep, were not those times he was having nightmares? I had originally thought that they were induced by the fever, but if they were bad dreams...wow, no wonder poor Fai still felt like crap. I would have too.

"You can tell me about them, if you want," I assured him, "the nightmares, I mean. If you think that would help you get over faster." Geez, something must have been wrong with me for me to have offered to talk Fai through his fears. Most of the time, I hated having to talk about people and their stupid, trivial issues. Fai smiled up at me, thankful, and I knew I had made the right decision then.

"Maybe in a little while; right now, it hurts too much."

"Fine," I agreed. Then, I pulled apart from him so I could look at his face. "But tell me one thing at least...?"

"Mhm?"

"Who is Ashura?"

Fai gaped at me as if I had shot his favorite and only puppy. Well, that would have been me, I guess, but you get the picture. He stammered, searching for a way to back out of the conversation. "I- he was- I mean-" he shook in my arms, desperate for a way to end the spectacle he was making of himself. "Well, it was a dream, ne? And dreams are all related to the subconscious mind, so it was probably just the name of one of my schoolmates...yes, that must have been it." He laughed, but it sounded forced. "You know how complex our brains are, Kurochii...well, then again, it isn't as if you have a brother studying to become a psychiatrist, so perhaps you don't. Anyways, it was nothing, nothing at all. You don't have to worry about me, doggy."

Of course, I didn't believe him for a split second, and I think he knew that. Right now was not the time to be too forceful with him, though, so I just nodded along. "Yeah, well, maybe you're right. But whoever it was, you seemed to have an...interesting relationship with him." Hah, the look on his face told me that I'd hit the mark. He backed off, looking bewildered and a little bit hurt, seeing that he was trapped.

"What exactly did you hear, Kuro?" He whimpered, drawing his knees up to his chest protectively.

For a second, I wasn't sure if it was even a good idea to tell him what he had said in his sleep. After all, wasn't I always the one saying that the past didn't matter? So what if he had some sort of relationship with another guy. Ashura was a guy's name, I knew that much. I shouldn't have been doing this to him, not like this. Except I had to know...was this the man that had torn Fai apart as a young teenager? Judging from the fearful look on his face at the mention of the name, I guessed that I had been right.

"I'd rather not talk about it, if that is alright with you," he said. I crawled over to him, taking his elfin, small chin with my fingers.

"No one said you had to," I reassured him, "all I'm saying is that when you are ready, I'll be here."

He looked at me with the most astounded look I have ever seen on anyone's face. "Thank you, thank you so very much. Kuro-chan is so good to me..." Then, those red-rimmed blue eyes were even closer than before, his body nearly touching mine. I closed that gap between our faces, kissed him. The first kiss we'd had since Tomoyo had been here visiting, and only our third overall, and that made it all the more amazing. Well, that and the fact that Fai knew how to do that figure eight thing with his tongue...I stopped thinking about how the kiss felt, and just went right on to the experiencing when he pushed me into the couch. I held his body against me, feeling the heat of our chests together, of the delicate bones of his back, and he nuzzled closer, breaking the make-out session to deliver little nips to my neck. After every few nips, however, he would lick tenderly at the little spots that formed. Just as I was getting into it, roaming my hands all over Fai's sides, then finally down to his ass, the phone rang.

"You don't have to get that, you know," Fai gasped, arching into my feather-light touch.

Reluctantly, though I got up and looked at the caller ID. "It's your brother," I told him, and tossed the phone to him. As soon as he started talking, somehow pushing words out through his kiss-swollen lips, I went to get a cold drink. Really what I needed was a cold shower, but for some reason I didn't want to miss the sight of Fai looking like that.

Reviews for more sexy Fai? (and Kuro, of course!)